Off to Hawaii

The Island of Hawaii, that is. I'm already in the state. The last time I went over there, it was to do research. This time, I'm bringing the family and we're going to have a nice little vacation. I don't know if I'll have the opportunity to blog in the evenings or not, but I will try to keep and post a daily diary for this trip.

Right now, I'm sitting in the interisland terminal at Honolulu International, waiting for our flight to be called (Hawaiian 262, nonstop to Hilo). It's a short hop from Oahu to Hawaii - about 50 minutes there, 45 minutes back. Once we land, we're going to head pretty much right for the national park. Since this is our first family vacation since my wife got back from Iraq, we decided to splurge and stay someplace nice. We've got reservations for three nights at Volcano House - a hotel that's right on the edge of Kilauea Caldera. The hotel has been rebuilt several times, but has been there in one form or another since 1866. The guest book runs several volumes, and has quite a few famous names in it (Samuel Clemens stayed there shortly after it was constructed in 1866.)

If all goes well, this should be an interesting trip. We're going to visit quite a few climate zones in the next few days, each of which has its own unique features.

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John... probably either tail winds or the landing patterns at each airport. Same reasons it takes me about 14 hours to fly from LAX to Sydney and only 13 hours back.